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"After 25 years we must evaluate liberalisations"

Date

20 Sep 2011

Sections

Social Europe & Jobs

Competition

Brussels - The Public Services Intergroup of the European Parliament together with CEEP (European Centre of Employers and Enterprises providing Public Services) organised on Tuesday 20th September a hearing on the “Evaluation of Liberalisation in Public Services: Tools and Practices”.

Stakeholders from both the private and the public side as well as academics discussed how to evaluate the liberalisation process in so-called “network industries” and looked at the cases of the transport and postal sectors. This opened the year of the Intergroup on a crucial issue for public services in a context of revision and modernisation of Internal Market rules.

There is an urgent need to properly evaluate the outcomes of the policies of the last 20 years. As a result, Prof. Lenk of Leipzig University showed that the employment and the cohesion dimension have yet been totally ignored by the evaluations undertaken so far. He voiced the concern that this may distort the process of informed political decisions.

“Public services are the backbone of the Internal Market and future growth. Therefore, we need to assess if the current framework of the provision of Public services is appropriate and if the reforms have improved it. Until now, this evaluation appears incomplete to allow policy-makers to anticipate issues at stake” explained Ralf RESCH, CEEP General Secretary. He concluded “we urge the European Commission to better take into account criteria such as employment, social and territorial cohesion and additional transactional costs for a better assessment of the market opening reforms”.

Françoise CASTEX, President of the Public Services Intergroup called for a better evaluation: "The evaluation of liberalisations is necessary. But it has also requirements. The Commission would like to measure the efficiency and the economic effectiveness. We say that a proper evaluation must be independent, multicriteria and must associate employees and users of the SGEI."